A Home windows 11 bug can eat 500GB of your storage. Here is find out how to verify

For those who’re at the moment experiencing issues with cupboard space in your Home windows 11 PC, it might not be your individual fault—even in the event you’re hogging a large variety of recordsdata and/or apps. You would possibly really be affected by a system bug that may take up as a lot as 500 GB of storage.

Buried within the patch notes for Home windows 11 replace KB5095093, there’s this line: “This replace improves disk area utilization for the CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal file.” At first look, you would possibly assume nothing of it. But it surely seems this fault may cause a system’s drive to develop more and more full. The issue is linked to the Functionality Entry Supervisor service, chargeable for app permissions in Home windows.

The file in query ought to usually solely take up a couple of MB of cupboard space, however on some PCs it might quantity to a number of hundred GBs. In some instances, it might even fill the drive fully, which can considerably cut back system efficiency—as skilled by this Reddit person.

How one can verify in the event you’re affected

Merely checking the listing of apps put in in your system and taking over area in your drive (which you are able to do underneath Home windows Settings → System → Storage) often gained’t reveal the issue. It’s because it doesn’t present which folder is inflicting the elevated storage utilization. You may solely see whether or not the drive is already full or not.

Home windows Newest recommends as an alternative utilizing an app like TreeSize, WinDirStat, or WizTree (one in all our favourite apps for checking PC well being) to seek for massive recordsdata and spot the place CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal is amongst them. It it’s a number of GB in dimension, you’re affected by the bug.

Alternatively, you should utilize the Home windows Command Immediate with administrator rights and enter the next command:

robocopy "C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsCapabilityAccessManager" "%TEMPpercentCAMCheck" /L /B /R:0 /W:0 /BYTES /NP

What you are able to do

Apparently, this problem has been current in Home windows 11 for a while, as the primary stories of it date again so far as a yr in the past. Microsoft has not directly acknowledged the issue with a repair for it, which is already accessible within the June 2026 elective replace however might be rolled out to all customers in subsequent month’s July Patch Tuesday replace.

You may set up the elective replace by checking for replace KB5095093 through Home windows Replace → Superior choices → Elective updates.

For those who’re affected by the bug, it’s best to keep away from making any unauthorized adjustments to the file (like deleting it outright) or trying to uninstall the Functionality Entry Supervisor, as this might result in additional errors.

By the best way: For those who’re utilizing Home windows 11 Residence, you’re lacking out on the various advantages of Home windows 11 Professional. To be taught extra, see our comparability of Home windows 11 Residence and Professional. If you wish to improve, snag it for reasonable within the PCWorld Software program Retailer: now simply $59 as an alternative of $99.